


The Little Emperor

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Category: The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry Garrard
Genre: Cape Evans, Gen, Not Yuletide, coldfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 02:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17133146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: In London, suffragettes have just marched on Parliament, and the capital prepares for the coronation of King George Vth. The Austro-Hungarian Emperor and the Russian Tsar will both launch their first Dreadnaught-class ships in the next few days: a week ago the Kaiser launchedSMS Friedrich der Grosse, his flagship of the High Seas Fleet. At the Foreign Office, Sir Edward Grey assures ambassador Baron Kato Takaaki that Great Britain will not intervene in Japanese plans for the Chinese province of Manchuria.The weather in Britain has been warm and sunny, a perfect summer. In Antarctica, it's the day before midwinter.





	The Little Emperor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lightcudder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightcudder/gifts).



There is little that can be concealed from one's fellows in a space no more than six feet by twenty, minimally furnished with five bunks and no curtains. Bowers snores, Cherry grinds his teeth when asleep, and every movement Oates makes is reflected in creak and flex of his wooden bunk. When in residence, a light fug surrounds the pipe smokers, the taciturn Atkinson and the stoical Meares, while on the other side of the Tenements Bowers' pen scratches late into the night as he calculates the daily domestic tasks of the Discovery Hut team and the stores and days and distances of the polar party's supplies. "The job ran so smoothly," Cherry wrote, years later, "That I am unable to tell the reader how stores were issued, or the dinner settled..." It is Cherry who sleeps lightest, jerking awake at the faintest disturbance, while Meares is impervious to alarms, storms, the clashing pans of breakfast, the rattle of the typewriter keys, the descending needle on the gramophone - everything except that particular note in a dog's howl which indicates to him and him alone that something untoward is occurring outside.

It is the last hours before Midwinter. The polar night envelopes the flat plateau of Cape Evans, but for the scientists and sailors of the expedition, there is no long sleep in the encompassing dark of the Antarctic winter. There are scientific measurements to be taken, samples to be recorded, sledging plans to be made, stores to be calculated, ponies and dogs to be exercised and fed. Seaman Evans adapts sledges and footwear, cook Clissold perfects the Penguin Rissole and the Seal Steak, and engineer Day checks and re-checks every bearing and coupling on the two surviving motor-sleds. Everyone writes letters and journals: Scott's, painfully aware of his audience, will be retrieved from the tent in which he dies. He will write, "Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tale..." and told it will be, over and over again, although Oates writes now to his mother from his austere bunk in the hut, sparsely blanketed and hung with pony harness, "Between you and me, things are not as rosy as they could be." "Scott...is sensitive," writes Bowers tactfully. Bowers is far more straightforward with Oates. "Watching you think is like watching snails crawl up a cabbage stalk." Bowers, who remained throughout happily entranced by the wildlife of Antarctica, was also ragged throughout for his inability to remember the scientific names of birds and sea life - unless to distinguish the arachnid from the cephalopod. Bowers vehemently disliked spiders.

It's Edward Wilson, Uncle Bill, who keeps the peace between expedition leader and men. Between scientific excursions and tactical peace-keeping, Wilson paints. He has his watercolours out now, on the corner of the officer's table, although after weeks of illustrations for the _South Polar Times_ he is painting the menu card for the midwinter dinner. He keeps his elbows in, for the table is covered with charts, scientific instruments, books, sewing, logarithm tables, Scott's fussy piles of incomplete paperwork - "Table please, Mr. Debenham," warns the long-suffering steward Hooper, pressed into service, and everything is cleared away a few minutes before the officer's lunch is served. Cherry writes that on weekdays a white oilcloth covers the table, but on Sundays, it was blue. He does not say if there was oilcloth for the sailor's mess, and there are no photographs of that other midwinter dinner.

At moments of celebration the scientific expedition poses, seated and standing, for Ponting's camera. On Scott's birthday, on 6th June, he sits as he always does at the head of the table, just as he would do in the captain's cabin of a Naval command, surrounded by men who will shortly make such complimentary speeches Scott will ask them to stop. There is an image of Napoleon just visible in the right hand corner of the photograph. Union Jacks and sledging flags hang from the roof - Cherry's sister made his, but Bowers cobbled his together from scraps. At the midwinter dinner fifteen days later, Ponting's camera reveals men crowding the room and the table topped with bottles of champagne, crackers and toys. Scott smiles: Oates looks pensive. Later, there are pictures of Bower's makeshift Midwinter Tree, made of skiing poles and flags. There's a gift on the tree for every member of the party, provided by Miss Souper, Wilson's wife's sister, and for once the image looks unguarded - there are crumpled napkins and half-full glasses, and one of men is smoking a cigarette. Later, there will be Snap-dragon, and the most spectacular _Aurora Australis_ yet, dancing, and confidences. "Cherry, are you in charge of your actions?" Oates will tease as they turn into their bunks. 

Ponting's photographs are frozen negatives, and the expedition has long since left Antarctica, but the table is still in place at the Cape Evans hut, and the stove from which Clissold produced such unlikely feasts. There are still boxes of ship's biscuit and marmalade, piles of linen, discarded boots and tools and notebooks. Harness piles the foot of Oates' bunk, just as it did in 1911. Cherry's bunk is turned back, as if he has just left. 

He sits there now. He has a book in his hands, not one of the expedition's library, but the product of his own editorship and Day's excellent craftsmanship. The _South Polar Times_ is finished. It's the third edition of the journal to be published on the continent, the first of this expedition. The preceding two volumes were compiled and edited on Scott's first expedition by Shackleton, and then when Scott sent Shackleton back to Britain by Louis Bernacci. Anonymous contributors submitted contributions up to five weeks before publication - although both Shackleton and Cherry found themselves beset by anxious writers, and both struggled to produce a final manuscript. For Mechanic Bernard Day, who bound the book in sealskin-wrapped boards, this single book of 2011 was far less taxing than the multiple volumes he had bound for Shackleton's own 1908 expedition. Shackleton had quipped himself with a printing press, and Ernest Joyce and Frank Wild printed the _Aurora Australis_ , the first book printed in Antarctica - although Shackleton himself was never sure how many copies had been printed, and not all copies had the same contents. It's notable, though, that any volume produced by Shackleton contains as many contributions from before the masthead as after it. "I serve the porridge, distributing it about equally between the inside and the outside of the bowls..."

For Cherry, the _South Polar Times_ was his first book. He would present it to Scott at the midwinter dinner: Scott, as expected, would read aloud extracts, although he would comment later in his diary that the verse was mediocre and only Thomas Griffith Taylor's article had any literary merit. Haunted, Cherry will write and re-write his own _The Worst Journey in the World_ , as if a different arrangement would, could, offer a different ending. It's too late now. The _South Polar Times_ is finished, and the contributors and subscribers of the expedition can speculate on the articles within. 

"Atkinson will surprise us all with his versifying," suggests Teddy Evans, from the table.

Atkinson grunts.

"I shall suspect Bowers of another rollicking ballad," says Debenham, slyly. 

"Although not in front of the Owner," says Meares, very quietly, to avoid that puritanical officer.

Bowers, who in Scott's absence early in their voyage south had indeed provided his own variations on nautical ballads, coughs, and glances around for inspiration, his eye lighting on the small portrait of the French Emperor. "Oates will have written the defence of Napoleon," he says. 

Oates raises an eyebrow, although behind him, in sepia daguerreotype, his pinned-up image of Bonaparte glowers from the wall with Byronic hauteur. 

"Oh, you will argue the little Emperor needs no defence!" Bowers avers, and then adds generously, "I suppose that, in his field, in _the_ field, I should say, but then, look at Trafalgar. The perfect alignment of the squadron! The crossing of the T at such a decisive moment! What a man Nelson was!"

"I take your _Trafalgar_ and raise you Waterloo," says Debenham. "Come, Oates, even you must acknowledge Wellington's superiority."

"The perfidy of Blücher and the Prussians was indeed remarkable," Oates allows. 

Even Wilson, printing the next day's menu - crystallised fruit and chocolate bonbons, he writes, as if in any English drawing-room - allows himself to smile. 

"But the fact is that one can hardly expect reasoning of a sailor," Oates carries on. "On a ship, one is either equipped and competent or one is not. The organisation of Bonaparte's campaigns, however, has never been bettered by any general - no resource wasted, nothing squandered, every man valued and every contingency encompassed - there has never been a man so valued by his troops."

Atkinson takes a non-committal puff on his pipe.

Bowers laughs. "See!" he says. "Titus, mistaken as your comparison is, surely you could have said as much in print!"

"Indeed, the issue cannot but have been improved by your contribution, Soldier," says Scott gravely. 

Oates' calm gaze lifts from Bowers to Scott, seated at the head of the table with his notes about him in disorder, fussy, fretful notations which tailed off into empty space. There is a forgotten mug of cocoa at Scott's elbow, and a half-started packing list, but he has reclaimed Cherry's typewriter and is tapping away at a series of letters.

Oates says nothing. Scott smiles, uneasy, and starts to type again. When sailor Tom Crean visits Oates' sister, years after the deaths, he will say of Oates: "We made up our minds he was a farmer, he was always so nice and friendly. But oh! He was a gentleman, quite a gentleman, and always a gentleman." Scott is the son of a bankrupt merchant, a naval officer only by the interest of an older relative, dependent on patronage. 

"I'm sure it'll be a first class publication anyway," says Bowers stoutly. "How could it not be, with Cherry at the helm?"

Cherry demurs, snorting. 

"Oh, surely all will be well," says Wilson comfortingly, "And should it not be, well, you would have done your best, dear boy. One can ask no more." 

He cleans off his brush, and snaps the lid down on his tray of watercolours. The finished menu is hung up to dry, and Wilson exchanges a smile with Scott. They are old friends. Then Scott bends his head again to the endless paperwork with which he crowds his hours, and Wilson cleans away his painting gear and his cocoa mug. In the tenements, Cherry slides his complete journal between mattress and wall, safely stored against impatient readers and wrapped against the soot from the stove. Atkinson taps the ash from his last pipe, although Meares will suck meditatively on the stem of his own long into the night. Oates lies on his back, straight-limbed, staring up at the rafters, while beside him Bowers has bent his head again to the distribution of life-saving stores, his bunk a makeshift desk. Cherry, who feels the cold more, he thinks, after the journey to Cape Crozier, pulls the blankets up to his nose and rolls over. 

Tomorrow is midwinter. And then, soon, they will set out for the pole.

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> Apsley Cherry-Garrard's _The Worst Journey in the World_ was of course the major source for _The Little Emperor_ , but Sue Limb and Patrick Cordingley's _Captain Oates_ , Anne Strathie's _Birdie Bowers_ , Scott's own _Diaries_ , and this year's excellent _The Book Collector, Volume 67, No.3, The Polar Edition_ , were also wonderfully helpful.


End file.
